Radio Script #1295

Little Talks on Common Things
January 3, 1982

The new year 1982 starts with doubt and anxiety on the part of the American people. Will the Reagan economic plans to stimulate business really work? Will we see any reduction in our increasing national debt, already at over a trillion dollars, or will that debt grow worse? Will employment increase, or will we see even more people out of work? In short, as 1982 passes along, will the American economy be better or worse?

Whatever happens does not mean that there is not going to be any United States of America. Since the American Revolution, our nation has survived many a crisis. We have seen many periods of financial depression, some of them seemingly the result of very stupid legislation. Early in 1837, Congress voted to distribute a sizable federal surplus of revenue to the various states, of which Maine indeed got its share. Before the next New Year, and even before the final payment on the surplus fell due, the country was in its worst depression since the Revolution, and those final payments to the states were never made. Our present financial situation is indeed critical, but it is not hopeless. A nation that survived a bitter Civil War and numerous depressions can surely find its way out of this one.

But a situation far more serious than money gives concern, not only to us, but to the whole Western world. Over all Europe and all North America hangs the Damocles sword of atomic destruction. It is no longer a matter between the United States and Russia. Many smaller nations now have the ability to make nuclear bombs, and more and more that ability is becoming evident in nations whose leaders themselves come close to being international terrorists. The international community must find a way to curb nuclear weapons, and it must find that way very soon.

Then also, our people are deeply concerned about increase in crime. Robbery, arson, and murder have become so common that they no longer make startling news. Every time we pick up the morning paper, we expect to read of new depredations, not hundreds of miles away, but in our own communities. Even in Kennebec, only one of our nation’s several thousand counties, we have come to expect at least one homicide a week. In rural areas, where a few years ago most people never locked their doors during the daytime, assault and murder have caused prevailing fear.

All these things make a grim picture for 1982, but they are not the whole picture. All about us are evidences of persons surmounting extreme difficulties.

Indeed in many areas, profits are still coming in. All across the nation there is determination that the elderly, the impoverished, the diseased, and the worthy unemployed must not be forgotten. Despite increasing dependence on government welfare, the private institutions for charity continue to thrive. For many years the New York Times has collected at Christmas time contributions of several hundred thousand dollars for what it calls New York’s Neediest Cases. This year those contributions are likely to be the largest ever. If you watched on TV in December the million dollar contest on Joker’s Wild, you must have been impressed by the audience applause when each contestant named the charity to which his winning would contribute.

America is not yet a socialistic, completely bureaucratic state. Voluntary association still plays an important part in our national life. So we must not despair, but we must on the other hand not be smug and complacent. It may be, that in all our history, we have never seen a time when it has been so necessary for home and school and church to continue to bring up a generation that values decency and fair play, honest work for adequate pay, concern for one’s neighbor, and respect for law. Perhaps the wave of permissiveness that has so swept the country is now on the wane. We can still believe that God’s in his heaven, and fundamentally all’s right with the world.

Now we turn to another subject. Over the years this program has had much to say about various religious denominations in Maine, and the part they have played in our state’s progress. Today I want to talk a bit about the Episcopalians.

It is well known that the earliest colonial government in New England, that of the Pilgrims on Cape Cod and that of the Puritans in Boston and Salem, was made up of people who belonged to the independent churches set up by those dissenters from the Church of England, and that Massachusetts government was strongly controlled by the Massachusetts clergy. Therefore, what later became the Congregationalist Church was
for a long time the state religion of New England, just as the Church of England was the state religion of Old England.

But the American colonies, including these in New England, were never without some influence from the established British faith which later in this country took the form of the Episcopal Church. There was, soon after 1630, a small but affluent Episcopal minority in Boston, and that influence became even stronger in Maine when Sir Ferdinanda Gorges secured his Maine grant from the British king.

As early as 1640 the Gorges government had placed Episcopal ministers at Saco, York, and Kittery, and by 1642 had one on Ricker Island near Cape Elizabeth. By 1650 there were also Episcopal clergy on the Isle of Shoals and in Falmouth, now the City of Portland. Those ministers all held services in spite of a Massachusetts law forbidding Episcopal worship on the District of Maine. Such defiance was possible because of conflicting claims between the Massachusetts and the Gorges governments concerning authority over Maine lands.

Gorges grants and sales of Maine land had brought in settlers so that by 1660 most of the inhabitants in the area between the Saco and Kennebec rivers were adherents of the Church of England. That was especially true of the larger settlements around Casco Bay. But when, in 1678, the Province of Massachusetts Bay gained control of all the former Gorges lands, it seemed likely that the established church of Massachusetts would overwhelm the Episcopalians and become the established state church of Maine.

But that did not occur. Early in the 18th century, soon after the Salem witchcraft trials, there developed determined opposition to the practice of the Massachusetts state church of denying freedom of worship to those of other faiths. Because of their growing financial importance in mercantile Boston, the Church of England’s adherents there might have eventually won their freedom alone, but it would not have come so soon without the help of Baptists, Presbyterians and Quakers, who joined the Episcopalians in the cause. The Massachusetts government was forced to give in, and by 1749, when a group of Boston merchants formed the company that became the Proprietors of the Kennebec Purchase, Maine settlers were able to have a clergyman of any Protestant denomination as their minister.

The Proprietors of the Kennebec Purchase were divided in their religious allegiance. Though the majority, like the Bowdoins and the Hancocks, were Congregationalists, a strong minority, led by the Proprietor’s Secretary, Dr. Sylvester Gardiner, were Episcopalians. In fact the first churches set up by the Proprietors were Episcopalian. An Episcopal organization in England was induced by Dr. Gardiner to send an Episcopal clergyman to the Proprietors’ first settlement at Pownalborough,’ and there until well into the Revolution, Rev. Jacob Bailey was a leading figure in the spread of religion up and down the Kennebec. Soon afterward Dr. Gardiner set up an Episcopal church in his own settlement named Gardiner.

Thus, by the time of the Revolution a considerable number of Episcopal clergy had become fellow workers in Maine with the very influential Robert Jordan, the Episcopal minister at Cape Elizabeth. It was the Revolution that gave bad setback to Episcopal progress in all New England. Many of its most influential clergymen and laymen, though by no means all of them, sided with the King against the American revolutionists. Among them were Dr. Gardiner and Florentius Vassal, who between them held large areas of land on the Kennebec. Both saw their property confiscated and both fled to England. With the loss of such Episcopal leaders, the church lost status in New England, and its further expansion was long delayed. Consequently it was Congregationalists, Baptists and later Methodists who became predominant in Maine. In the larger American cities, the American Episcopal Church gained strength in the 19th century. Trinity Church at the head of New York’s Wall Street and Trinity Church in Boston became deservedly famous, and in this century such distinguished places of worship as the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York are known allover the world.

When I first became a resident of Waterville half a century ago, the local Episcopal congregation was only a mission that had not long occupied its small edifice on Center Street. Today in its fine new building on Eustis Parkway it is an important, self-supporting church, whose members represent heavily the professional sector of the community.

Now, as we come to the closing minutes of today’s program, I want to mention two streets in the City of Portland that were given Central Maine names. They were Waterville and Kennebec streets. In 1899 Attorney M. F. King of Portland wrote a letter to Frederick Boothby of Waterville that explained those names. The letter said: “I have consulted with Josiah Drummond and we conclude that Waterville and Kennebec streets were named for competing railroads. When the Androscoggin and Kennebec RR was built from Danville Junction to Waterville, it connected with the Atlantic and St. Lawrence from Portland to Montreal, the line that later became the Grand Trunk. The competing line into eastern Maine was the Kennebec and Portland, then built as far as Augusta, but with ambitions to go farther east. Near the Kennebec and Portland depot in Portland was laid out a new street called Kennebec Street, and near the Atlantic and St. Lawrence depot was put in another highway called Waterville Street.”

And with that, we must now say goodbye until next week.

Year: 1982